The Secret Of Successful Blogging. No Tutorial. Just Intuition

You might be motivated or even surprised how easily this or that blogger can earn a lot of money by producing not super sophisticated content. And at a closer look you see that it was quite a work behind the success. But was it just a hard work or is there a secret that makes successful blogging much easier?

Here’s my attempt to reveal the hidden part.

Warning! The stuff I’m going to ponder on below can not be easily explained with words. But I just want to do it.

Why becoming a successful blogger is not easy and will be even harder for you

If you already started a blog some time ago you could see that the things probably did not go as well as you expected. Although you followed top bloggers’ advice or even bought an online course sort of “Successful blogging. From $0 to $1K in 6 weeks” (or even in a year), it did not bring you $1K. Not even close to that.

The bad news is that doing the same as others will not make you as successful as them. Blogging (as well as the whole economy) is transforming now especially fast. And its main message is that more and more people are doomed to be outsiders.

The solution seems obvious and this is to be creative to stand out of others in whatever you do, especially if you are a self-employed. “Yeah, I know” – You may say, – “But how can I be creative? And what is being creative exactly? After all, how can I become more creative and successful blogger?”

Another bad news is that blogging is not a school exam that you can prepare for according to a known program and pass it. Blogging, if you intend to earn money or gain popularity, is a business. And although you can be taught to be a manager, you can’t be really taught to a full extent to successful blogging and to be a business owner.

However, you, a blogger or a small business owner, can personally avoid the doom of general recession, if you know how to leverage some of your advantages. But let’s leave this for the next section of this article.

You can’t prepare for doing business based on successful blogging. The preparation, however good it may seem, is not enough for it.

Typical step-by-step tutorials how to become a successful blogger are BS

A very popular step-by-step approach (a sort of “Successful Blogging: $2K by blogging earning program. Step by step” etc) could probably teach you basics and some tricks that you can find in the Internet among free resources. But the most important part can not be taught in such a direct way. Even motivation that some good programs can give you is not enough for success.

Why will not step-by-step approach work? Because the currently coming era requires even more creativity, knowing and using more technology, being more social-friendly, being more efficient, being more truthful. And you can not simply learn all of it in a step-by-step tutorial. Only a part of it can be taught a direct way (“do this do that” approach).

What you need is self-development and self-revealing which many people ignore or neglect as non-relevant to business. This is a big mistake which basically affects your motivation and efficiency.

If you just repeat what others do without your sparkling originality and creativity, you are very likely to get into failures and overwhelming depression.

Depression happens when your sweet expectations based on lying and manipulation don’t meet with a harsh reality again and again. And it devastates your life energy.

There’s no one path in business which fits everyone. The paths to successful blogging are different and not straightforward.

What part is missing in tutorials how to become a successful blogger?

But after all you can learn to move forward on your way to doing your business successfully. You can learn and find this out by doing it your own way:

by listening to yourself,

by seeing what others do,

by experimenting,

by being motivated (not connected with dry envy!),

by feeling what you really want to do,

by feeling what others need,

be feeling what unique value you can bring to the world.

This is not a secret sauce. All these things may be well-known to you. But you may have no clear idea how to make them work.

If you don’t even know where successful blogging starts, then let you do what first comes to your mind. And after it’s done listen to your feelings. And this is how you will get to it.

After some practice you stop doing BS and start gaining a feeling about what you really want to do. This is not a project or a campaign. But this is something more. This is the way. Your way. And you know that it will surely work. You don’t know how, but it will. Not that it should work, or is likely to work. But that it WILL work for sure.

And this is not only about money. This is not only about income. All these material things will come. Yes, I know it’s hard to think positive, when you are short in money and everything you think you need is to start earning or increase your income. But this is actually what stops you from really succeeding.

What if you are short for money and you want to start blogging?

How to combine two things – getting income and doing the business the way you want (remember: successful blogging is a business). You might have heard that you need to put money not at the first place. In most cases it’s hard to do so (unless you have a sponsor or a rich daddy). The short advice is to think what you really want to do in life and only THEN think how you can earn from it.

Not vice versa. In other words, you can’t really think of money first and then start trying to love doing what brings you money. Well, technically you can. But this can make you unhappy and destroy you in several years or burn you out too fast.

This happened to me when I was going up the corporate ladder during 8 years pretty well. But when it became hard to ignore my stomach ache that turned into a daily painful feeling, I quit my full time job. I was stupid enough to get too far with ignoring the signals from my health. But I was smart enough to quit.

But let’s get back to the main topic.

What if you want to start earning by blogging as soon as possible?

Is it possible to start the business you want and get good income from the very start?

A good news is that this is possible.A bad news is that this is possible not for everyone the way they want it.

One way to make it possible is to do what you really want, but you need to do this very well. “Very well” means much better than anyone else within your niche. “Much better” means the way people really like it and notice it.

Another way is to learn to do it very well during the process. And thus you will start bringing home the beacon after some time.

During the learning process try to be happy (a bigger part of the time) and be active regardless of circumstances (a bigger part of the time), and you will unharness your creativity. And this is what will boost your income.

The quicker you unharness your creativity, the faster you start earning.

Keep the following thing in mind – if you focus first of all (or what is much worse) only on money, it will not put you much forward. And the reason is that it will stop you from doing something really well.

You want money in the first place? Wrong!

You can’t do anything really well just for money. But you can do for money what you can do really well. This is especially true for a long period of time.

If you just start out or in the beginning of your business way, the real problem is your mentality. There are big odds that your primary focus is on income before all, which is wrong.

The doors of income open the opposite direction. You start from what you love and can do well, join it with what is needed by people and. And money will come on the way.

There are less chances that you will get success, if you start from trying to make some money by doing mediocre stuff (and probably trying to fall in love doing it).

For example, a lot of beginner bloggers want to start earning big by joining the most well-paid affiliate programs. This is a false way. Find really good products and there are good chances that they will have affiliate programs too. Probably not too attractive, but the products should go first, not the affiliate commissions.

Of course, this does not mean that you should not think about money at all. Living and doing business does require money.

Any examples of doing business when putting money not in the first place?

Here’s my own small example – I made a research on security plugins and services for WordPress without affiliate income in mind at all. My purpose was just to figure out how I can protect my sites against hacking. But pretty soon, my article became quite popular in Google search and I joined affiliate programs of the best products to benefit from that.

A similar story is with EIG hosts. I’ve made a research to figure out the full list of EIG hosts that people need to avoid (EIG is a generally terrible set of hosts, but with pretty good marketing). And the article has got in Google top search results.

Also, I get emails from people who thank me for helping them avoiding EIG and finding a better host. And they are likely to buy the host via my affiliate link. Moreover, often they let me know explicitly that they are going to buy the host through my affiliate link. And in return to their loyalty I thank them and say that I will get a commission (I tell them exact amount how much commission I will get). This increases trust between us. I simply enjoy establishing relationships like this. And It’s not possible to do it well with just money in mind.

So, if you just list the hosts with the hope that people will buy them from your affiliate links, then it’s a lame hope. Even selecting really good hosts is not enough. There should be something more on your blog and in your personality – the value for readers which is not possible to create with money dominating your mind.

As you can see, my desires and my passion to figure something out helped me to write useful articles which is a part of successful blogging. And the articles then let me earn money on regular basis in so-called a passive mode. If I just wanted to earn money, such content could not simply be born in my head.

One more example of doing something not for money (look under the hood now)

And look at this – a similar thing I’m doing right now. I’m writing this article, that I just feel I want to write now. And this article can motivate you and help you move further along your business way.

As a result, you are likely to become a more loyal reader, which will pay me out with more social shares, more backlinks, better ranking in search engines and then more sales in the future. That’s the way success is coming in blogging.

So, the real fuel of your successful blogging is not your income, but your actualization. It is your creativity and passion that you put into your activity helping others. First you give, then you get. Money comes on the way.

The way to success may take some time, but you can shorten it by times by thinking the right way. Right thinking means opening up your soul to your destiny. You can’t open your soul to money. This is simply not the way it works well.

Well, of course you can fake the love and do what seemingly can bring you success in blogging. Hoping that once success comes, you will love this truly or you will start doing something else. No way. Of course you can try doing so, but you will soon realize that you can’t wait so long for the success to come.

What I’ve told you above is wrong

Now I will tell you something that breaks the pattern.

Don’t take my words literally as instructions. The words may be clumsy and not precise. Pay attention to your own feelings which help you embrace your destiny. This is your own guiding star. No one can be a guiding star for you. Only yourself. And this is what truly will bring you success.

No online courses can show you step-by-step way to your success. Because it is your and only your own way to find your guiding star.

Your guiding star is like zen. You can’t name it precisely, you can’t describe it fully, you can’t point at it exactly. You can just find it with a silent deep feeling inside of yourself.

No guru or coaching program can guide you to your Zen, but it may help. And you can use anything that can bring you closer to your guiding star. This can be reading other blogs, this can be listening to podcasts or music, or simply watching random or popular YouTube videos or even watching how kids play or whatever that make you enjoy or relaxed.

Someone may think this is a sort of procrastination or time wasting. But it may be the time when great ideas may come to you.

Triggers that get you closer to your blogging success

There are triggers which are touching something inside of you and as a result you start seeing what you couldn’t see before, feel what you couldn’t feel before, and finally understand the things that were out of your scope before. But you need to open up your mind for the triggers and by these triggers you will start feeling your destiny.

The triggers that work best for me are books, and to less extent – movies. Music and songs work also well, but less often. Anyway, it’s all individually. And you may benefit the most perhaps from talking to your friends or your dog instead.

Meditation is an additional way for letting you understand your inner triggers and feel your destiny.

And the more you feel your destiny, the more world will give you opportunities. Your work will become easier. Your creativity will give you tons of ideas and will pave your way to successful blogging. And money will come this way.

Hard work and easy money: a key difference in successful blogging

Most people think that money comes after hard work. This is sort of true. But this is only a part of the truth. The other part of the truth is that you need to work hard before your destiny is open up for you. When you get your destiny (or in other words, when you more and more feel your individual Zen), it starts going much easier.

Money is what will come along your successful blogging.

When you see other bloggers earning tons of money it may seem that money flow in sort of magically by themselves.

This is so, because these bloggers have come closer to their destiny.

They may call it like this: “first you work on your blog then it works for you”.

After you have found the way to your destiny, you start getting authority, because people love those who know and feel something deeper. Companies are desperately looking for the passionate bloggers and influencers:

It opens up different opportunities (including financial ones) for you.

But before being approached by companies with sponsorship or attractive partnership you need to develop your blog, fill it with content and passion. And the content and the passion are the products of you realizing your destiny.

Why do some people who has a lot of experience can comparatively easily achieve blogging success in absolutely new field or niche?

Not because they have money to invest into this. Not because they have social connections. In fact, all of these are not the necessary starting points.

What is important is that they know themselves better. They feel their destiny better.

Although some of them even don’t realize it explicitly, they trust themselves. Starting trusting yourself is a natural thing when you come closer to realizing your destiny. And realizing your destiny better lets you trust yourself even deeper.

You may call it intuition. Successful people trust it. Others can’t distinguish between voice of intuition and voices that speak from hesitation and fear, and that’s why they feel lost.

Let’s talk a little now about how you can find your way to your destiny (and the way to your successful blogging as a result).

I guess that sharing something from my experience can be a starting or a helping point for you on your own way.

I, like any other person, have two worlds in myself – a logical and an artistic ones.

Before all, I have developed very well logical things, which are connected with a left hemisphere activity. For example, I enjoy doing analysis, programming, working with numbers and processing data.

And at the same time I love irrational (and useless from purely rational point of view) things such as daydreaming, music, natural meditation (e.g. watching flowing water or clouds, staring at horizon etc).

I used to underestimate the power of the irrational things in me. For example, I thought that glaring at stars at the night sky is wasting time. And I felt not good about doing it. But I enjoyed it inside of myself trying to keep it in secret from my rational part (the “parent” in Fromm’s classification or “super-ego” in Freud’s).

I played piano many years ago. And then there was a long period of time when I thought that all the years I spent on it was a useless waste of time. I was not going to become a professional piano player anyway. But I enjoyed playing.

I did not want to understand artists who spent their lives painting whereas a photo camera can do it much better. But many paintings attract me way much better than photos.

I thought that hard work on specific tasks is what everyone should be doing, and there should be minimal time for joy. But I secretly felt that all work and no play makes a jack a dull boy.

And only when I allowed myself to combine two worlds (irrational and irrational) without sorry and inner restrictions and self-punishment, I opened up great horizons in front of myself.

I let myself do what I really wanted to do – enjoy the life the way I wanted. I started doing a lot of activities including hiking, climbing, mountaineering, skydiving, fighting. And whenever I could find time I read and listened to audiobooks.

I felt that I did the right thing. When I felt this way, I understood that I have found something really important. This is how I stepped on the way to my destiny.

This period lasted for several years. The life experience I got doing these sport activities was very important. Understanding and feeling the nature, people and myself is something that can not be taught anywhere unless it’s your own practice. And I tremendously enjoyed it.

Soon after I started doing what I really wanted, I left my full time job which promised me a great career at that time. And again I felt it was the right thing to do, although it looked really crazy.

I started doing freelancing from scratch, and succeeded in it. I enjoyed working from home and be payed on per-hour or per-project basis.

But then I realized I have already got the experience I wanted. And I decided to leave freelancing and go towards something bigger. But I knew it may take some time before it pays off financially.

And again I felt it was a right move, although from a financial point of view it was not an easy decision.

Thus, I started listening to my feelings, which used to seem irrational to me. I started to accept both rational and irrational worlds in myself. And it let me open up great perspectives.

Step by step I’m going closer and closer to my destiny and I feel I’m going the right way. And I can equally say, I know this is the right way.

Hope sharing my experience and thoughts on it will help you as well.

Words about successful blogging is just the tip of the iceberg

The most interesting part is hidden

I’ve noticed that many bloggers who share their success stories, are able to reveal only the tip of the iceberg. The common words like hard and smart work, believing in yourself, doing what you love and what people need and what they can and want to pay for – it’s all well known from day one. But it’s not enough for everyone to become successful.

This is because there are things which are very hard to describe with words. It’s hard to explain what really leads bloggers to success. It’s hard alike to explain the beauty of mountains and mountaineering if you have never spent weeks in a tent climbing mountain peaks and passes. You can see beautiful photos, or you even can go hiking around, and you sort of know what it’s like, but this is not it.

Only other mountaineers can feel the same way. Similarly, only other successful people can feel what it takes to become successful. No tutorial, however detailed it is, can make you be a good mountaineer and love the mountains. No tutorial, however detailed it is, can make you successful in your business. You get it by yourself.

It’s me getting it by myself

Even with the greatest successful business tutorial you can’t see or feel the magic that happens behind the curtains of these success stories. And you simply miss the point even if it’s articulated clearly. And the bad news is that nobody can explain it to you in the clear words that could be understood by you perfectly. Because this is out of someone’s else words scope. This is on another level – on the level of your destiny which is out of reach by anyone except you.

Even now when I’m trying to share something I feel using the words, it may look and sound opaque or unclear. Because this is so when it’s written or pronounced. These are just words. They are always wrong. Only your destiny is right. But it can not be explained with words well enough. And only you can find out it with your inner sight, with your intuition.

Famous authors try to analyze success: good attempts, but nothing more than that

If you prone to self-analysis, you may realize your destiny (your way to success) consciously. Otherwise you just do it. I am good at self-analysis and introspection. And this let me share my thoughts on some books about success, as well as my own findings. I believe that this can very helpful for people who is willing to think and learn this way.

There are many examples, when people try to share their success stories or analyze other people’s success. Just a couple of examples.

Tim Ferris, like many other successful people, in my opinion, is a just-do-it man. Although he is successful, he simply can’t explain how the way to success works on a deep level, how the success comes. He actually explains it on a procedural or structural level, pointing out stages towards success making advantage of outsourcing and time management (see his book “The 4-hour week”). It’s great, but does not hit the bull’s eye.

But the point is that no one can hit the bull’s eye because this is sort of Zen, which you can’t point at directly with the words. You can’t explain it. You can just feel it with your inner sight and your intuition with the help of doing.

The book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie shows the typical example of mechanical approach to success or what Dale wanted to be a success. A bad, even detrimental and harmful thing is that this approach is actively blocking your destiny thing. This is the closer way to neurosis, rather than success. His approach teaches how to pretend and lie to everyone including yourself. Whereas much more powerful (and healthier) way to success is actualization (which implies being honest to yourself).

Everett L. Shostrom, the author of psychological book “Anti-Carnegie or Man, the Manipulator” gives us much more useful advice how to succeed in in life (and in business). He makes a good step towards helping you find your destiny.

Stephen Covey‘s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” tried to make the essence of success keys. Very useful. But he misses the main point too. These habits are too mechanical as well. Something is missing. And this something can not be expressed with words clearly enough. This is what can be felt by each of us individually.

Seth Godin points at an interesting part of people’s psychology by telling us about story-telling (read “lying”) in marketing and how people lie to themselves and how you can use it as marketer. However, it’s full of vulgar manipulative advice which are the shallow attempts to imitate way to success exploiting weaknesses of others. However, kudos to Seth for his attempt to look deeper under do-this-do-that approach in very simple words using clear and funny examples.

A great attempt of describing way to success is done by Richard Branson in his book “Screw It, Let’s Do It”. Without going into introspection, he shows a super motivational example of living according to principles of following your destiny. When you feel the same way as the author, you may start getting this destiny thing even if the author does not speak of it out loud.

“Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill is another attempt to nail the problem of reaching success down. It combining both spiritual and mechanical approaches to success. This book is great in its genre, but it does not explain the core. It just describes the way to success from an outside observer’s point of view. But it lacks the inner revelation that is the core and the source of success.

The book explains what behavior leads to success, and it tries to dig to the roots. But it does not explain what is the ultimate source or the engine of such behavior. The most important things are leaking out like Zen when you try to describe it with words.

And finally, the reason why this book can not be a guide to success is that it was not the revelation, but just an analytical (and therefore a blind) attempt of someone to describe what he could see.

In this respect I can’t help but mention Brian Tracy, who specializes in teaching success in his books. In his opinion success can be perceived as a science, which can be learned by everyone.

Here’s his short video describing the idea:

This is a good western approach to the matter, which looks pretty clear to people. But behind this structural approach there’s something left hidden. As I said, not everything can be expressed with words. There’s something that should be experienced and lived through.

The components of the secret sauce of success in blogging

Many bloggers try to express their thought on success their own way. Very often they describe it in a mechanical way (do this do that etc). But this is not enough and give you all chances to turn you into a neurotic and burned-out person with a feeling of inferiority complex (or even broken down completely).

But what is the sufficient way to describe the way how to become successful? For me this is a mixture of the following components:

feeling (developing intuition),

learning (getting someone else experience) and

doing (getting your own experience).

And the secret sauce (everyone loves secret sauces :)) that I’d point out is the following. If to wrap it with the words, I’d say that you need to learn how to feel the magic of your destiny and apply it to your blogging. How do you know what your destiny is? When you get it, you will know it. Look for it and listen to yourself.

Very simply speaking about destiny, it’s what you may have already heard – do what you love, follow your passion, be ultimately creative, believe in yourself, grow over yourself – it all sounds very familiar and even vulgar. But in many ways this is it. The only missing part is the inner motivation and intuition, your atomic reaction inside of you and your inner compass. I’d call this core part of success the following way: feeling of your destiny.

Again, this may sound not very clearly, but as I said, not everything can be expressed with the words. But the words can help you get to it.

A genius part of your success

The inventor and businessman Thomas Edison once said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”.

So, the destiny that I’m talking about is contained in this one percent of inspiration.

Friedrich Nitzsche, one of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of the 19th century, once said “What is Genius?- To aspire to a lofty aim and to will the means to that aim.”

So, the integral part of your business success is the destiny that I’m talking about in this post, and Nitzsche calls it Genius.

Your genius is your destiny. Your genius is the deepest feeling of your destiny. Genius is the feeling of being ultimately right in whatever you do. Master what you love doing and you’ll get to something indescribable, a poor word for which is success.

I believe that my personal view on this topic of success can add another perspective for you so that you could move to your success more efficiently.

Conclusion

In this final section I will just give you a very short summary, the key idea of my article about successful blogging.

In addition to everything you read, listen or watch in blogs and business books, try to find something inside of you that can’t be expressed precisely with words.

Some people call it intuition, genius, destiny, guiding star, gut, inner voice. It’s something inside of successful people and they can feel it, but not always can describe it very well.

If you find it too inside of you and truly feel how this helps you on your way, then you are doomed to be successful. If you can’t feel it, look for it, then just do what you feel like, then look for it again. It’s out there.

P.S.: If you can find the words to express your thoughts and ideas about this very important but still under-investigated topic, you are more than welcome!

I hope you enjoyed the article! You can read my free researches on resources and tools for bloggers and small business owners on this website. By the way, if we haven't met before - my name is Michael Bely.